


Looking for the Stars

by GoodSourceofFiber



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between Episodes, Drinking, Ficlet, Gen, Stargazing, Swearing, Writing Exercise, bro feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodSourceofFiber/pseuds/GoodSourceofFiber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't want to go back to 'normal' for now , sometimes he just wants to sit on the roof of his car with his brother and forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking for the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TenSpencerRiedPlease](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/gifts).



The Impala, despite all the care and time Dean puts into it, semi-occasionally breaks down on the side of the road. Sometimes it’s on the way to a job and sometimes it’s in the middle of the night (which seems to sum up the night perfectly).  The only plus side of this fuck-up is that Dean isn’t afraid of the dark, he knows what’s hidden in the shadows and more importantly he knows how to kill what lurks there. He could walk to the gas station and mechanic shop ten miles back but that would mean leaving his car beached on the side of the road. But it would be like leaving his newborn babe on the road to die to get kidnapped by sneak sons of bitches in black and white striped shirts and dress shoes. With Dean’s luck he wouldn’t put it past the Hamburglar showing up. He could call someone to come and bring the parts and they would be there in a couple hours tops, free of charge. But Dean doesn’t do that, he makes up an excuse that all four of his cellphone’s, by some terrible twist of fate seemed to mystifyingly become dead or have no signal out in the boonies where his ’67 was parked. He makes up these lame excuses because it’s a nice night in the warmth of the south the stars where out and, though Dean will never admit it, he’d miss out on some quiet time with Sammy, his brother.

In moments like this it’s hard to complain about what backstabbing thing they had done to each other this week. When it’s just him and Sam and the Impala tension seems to lift away so they can land on the hood and stare up at the night stars guessing at what’s beyond God’s plant of hairless apes to God’s planets of Space Peanut’s ( hey, anything was a possibility, Dean didn’t know- he just guessed at this shit). The nebula lights up the sky, the moon rises without question of its duty and no living or dead soul interrupts the brother’s as they stare up at the stars. Sam doesn’t bring up the whole ‘you would do anything to not be alone’ lecture and Dean doesn’t talk about how he sees no hope for him without Sam. Sam was _ready_ to die he _wanted_ to sacrifice himself three months ago for the chance to shut the gates of hell forever.

Dean would never let his brother die, even if that meant giving up his own life instead. He would lay his life down on the line because he saw Sam with a future; he wasn’t the damaged goods that the job left Dean.

“Zero to One.” Sam says after clearing his throat. Dean looks from his beer bottle up towards the sky. He doesn’t see it but a second ago Sam had seen a piece of rock shoot across the night sky racing away in space, burning up in the atmosphere on its way towards the sun as fast as they were spinning away from the sun. Dean looks at Sam, really looks at him. His baby brother was someone else now, changed from all the shit that Dean has dragged him through. He’s older now, the lines that were once lines of concern turn into lines of frustration. His face doesn’t twist the same as what Dean remembers when they were just on a mission trying to find Dad from a ‘hunting trip’. Dean didn’t admit it but he seemed to be changing too he’s finding it harder to bounce back from a fight more and more these days. Soon, Dean thinks, soon something with big claws and quicker reflexes is going to kill him and he’ll die fighting in this job. He’ll never live to be an old man, well… not again at least.

He just hopes that Sam will. That the Winchester family business dies with Dean and that Sam’s kids will never know the life that his dad grew up in.

Sam looks over at his brother; his lines of concern/ frustration are set on his face as he sets his own Labatt’s on the hood of the Impala. Dean winces when the glass bottle sits carelessly on the hood of his baby but says nothing. “What’s up with you Dean?” Sam asks, he sounds slightly annoyed, but mostly just suspicious of what his brother’s angle was trying to get at.

Dean could say a lot of things, he thinks about telling his brother the truth , he wants to tell him he’s just frustrated and needed a break but he can’t seem to form the line within his mouth. So Dean looks away from his brother into the dark of the highway and takes a long pull from his beer bottle before he answers: “I’m just missing the times where our biggest problem was if Dad was going to come home or not,” Dean tells his brother. It’s really pathetic actually- their childhood consisted of wondering if their dad was going to ever come home or not, or if Bobby had to come get them with the unfortunate news.

  Sam sighs and looks back up at the sky. Dean is not upset; he knew that John Winchester is a touchy subject with his brother. The pair of them never really got along never made up after they found one another again, probably never will. Dean doesn’t think that if they ever saw one another again, be it in heaven or hell they would never reconcile. Dean wondered if that was the reason he and Sam seemed to be having problems lately, that maybe he was turning bitter, more like their father day-by-day. The older Winchester takes another drink out of the bottom of the glass bottle hoping that it would wash that thought away. He would ask Sam but that might bring up another unpleasant argument between them and the last thing either one of them needed right now was to talk about their Dad, of all people. Of all the shit that’s gone on between them he thinks it’s probably better to just leave it.

“What did you say happened to your phones?” Sam asked. Dean thought maybe he was trying to lighten the mood or maybe he was looking for a way out of the awkward situation Dean accidentally put them both in.

“Two dead, two don’t have signal,” he said in bad temper, automatically drawing on the tough guy persona he used to cover his emotions so frequently. Sam barley notices anymore, it’s like Dean’s shell has become his real exterior he wonders if Sam knows how fragile it is right now. Sam nodded, saying nothing to his older brother as he did and took out his own phone, the blue incandesce back light lighting up his wrinkles. The one Dean so frequently forgot he owned for one reason or another, and frowned. He didn’t want to break the mirage yet, he wanted to sit in silence, let the universe save itself for a few more precious minutes.

“Weird, my phone has signal,” he looked back at the screen to double check and Dean thought that was sort of sweet. He doesn’t call him on his shit even if it’s _Sam_ and Sam _loves_ to call Dean on his shit no matter what it was. If Sam said he didn’t trust Dean at least a little of that trust remained or he wouldn’t have double checked his phone at all.

“I don’t think anyone will answer their phone at this time of night,” Dean added before Sam decided to call someone for a part or a ride away from Dean Winchester- professional life ruiner: “might as well wait till a decent hour”. He took another swig of his beer nonchalantly and watched Sam out of the corner of his eye. Sam looked at the phone for a second before putting it back into his pocket. Dean would have smiled but that would have been too obvious so he looked back to the sky for something to focus on.

Sam leans back against the car and picked up his beer, looking back to the sky as Dean was. Dean showed restraint and abstained from wiping the water ring off his Baby and smacking Sam upside the head for even considering marking up a thing of beauty like the Impala. Yes, Dean had to admit it was a lot easier in the early days when their biggest problem was their father rather than each other. Still, Dean tries to grasp at their previous relationship when he says; “you left a water ring on my car.”

Sam sort of smiles and Dean can’t help but smiling too even if it was just around the lip of his Labatt. He wasn’t naïve; he knew their relationship would never go back to normal, if it was _normal_ to even begin with. But little moments like this, where they could pretend they had a nice, apple pie and white picket life at the end of the highway.

“Dean the Impala isn’t a cube of sugar. It can get wet without melting. I mean- you drove through rain two days ago on the way to Miami,” Sam leaves out that Dean lovingly cleaned the car twice after that or the fact that he bitched about the rust stains and the new wax he put on her a week before that.

 “She’s a thing of beauty and you can’t just leave water rings on her hood,” Dean argues.

Sam rolled his eyes but not in the condescending way he adopted more recently, “‘she’ is a car Dean, cars do not have genders.”

Dean snorts, “You lack imagination.” They fall back into a comfortable silence, probably the first in months, maybe even longer. Dean can’t remember or maybe he simply didn’t want to.

Sam takes a drink of his beer and Dean watches a fleck of space junk burns hot across the night sky, “One to One, Sammy” he says.     


End file.
